


Eclipse

by chaletian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Existential Angst, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 11:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18603211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: The following year, Morgan fails Math, and experiments with sculpture and free love. Neither works out.





	Eclipse

“I’m not in his shadow, Mom! He’s a goddamn _eclipse_!”

This isn’t the first fight Morgan Stark has with her mom, or the last, or in any way remarkable. They fight pretty much constantly, and Morgan wishes that it wasn’t that way; wishes, when she’s a little older, that she has more self-control, but Pepper Potts pushes all of her buttons somehow. She looks so tired sometimes, and Morgan hates herself, but it never makes any difference.

*

She puts a lot of effort into failing Physics when she’s fourteen; at fifteen, she tries to be a poet. At a college party she crashes with her best friend Betty, she writes a perfectly scanned sonnet that is an ode to the weed they’ve bought, which she later submits to her high school yearbook. It is rejected, with prejudice.

“I coulda been the next Ginsberg,” she slurs, as Happy drives her home, and when she catches his eye in the rearview mirror, she knows, she fucking _knows_ , that he’s driven her dad home like this too, and who is she kidding here?

The following year, she fails Math, and experiments with sculpture and free love. Neither works out.

*

You can buy postcards of Tony Stark. They’ve made films about him. Everyone knows who he was. Morgan can’t remember him. Whatever she did remember has been long overwritten by that stupid hologram he left them. There’s not a real person left anymore. But his eyes look back at her in the mirror, and it’s suffocating.

*

At eighteen, Morgan Stark disappears.

*

She’s not stupid enough to think that she’s disappeared. The idea that her mom doesn't have the resources to know exactly where she is at all times is risible; Morgan is not that dumb. But she buys a new ID and acquires a perfectly fake high school record, and Emily Hill enlists in the US Air Force. 

* 

Six months in, on a visitors’ day, Grandpa Steve is waiting for her. He’s not her real grandfather, obviously, and Morgan knows that he and her dad had some complicated history, but despite everything, despite all her issues, that’s never really mattered.

“Hey, sweetheart,” says Grandpa Steve, and gives her a hug. “How’s it going? You doing ok?”

They chat for a bit, share some training stories, and Grandpa Steve goes home. He doesn’t tell her to call her mother; that’s why he’s the best.

Morgan messages her mom anyway.

*

Emily Hill learns how to fly planes; how to fix them, and then how to make them fly higher, further, faster. She learns to sit in a hanger, comfortable in her jumpsuit and in her own skin, making alterations in a computer-supported design, and has a memory of watching her dad do the same in their cabin by the lake. 

*

Morgan flies into the stratosphere in a craft she helped design, and remembers loving her father three thousand. She can look at herself in the mirror, and see him, and herself. That’s OK. She goes to see General Rambeau, the program director, and says, “My name is Morgan Stark.”

“My name is Monica Rambeau,” says the General. “Are we handing out prizes now?”

“No, sir,” says Morgan. 

“You probably ought to be court-martialed,” says General Rambeau, “but that seems like a lot of paperwork and the loss of a good pilot, so we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir,” says Morgan.

Later, after a couple of beers with the team, she goes home, and flicks open a video chat.

“Hey, Mom,” she says. “It’s Morgan. I thought I’d say hi.”


End file.
